


Just Like a Love Story

by bobbiewickham



Series: After the Surprise [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 14:08:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2814773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobbiewickham/pseuds/bobbiewickham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the 1830 revolution, a secret comes to light. (Outtake from "The Last Laugh").</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Like a Love Story

**Author's Note:**

  * For [genarti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti/gifts).



> This was written on a dare from genarti. Unfortunately, I find it hard to resist a dare.

“He’s gone too far this time.” Feuilly’s clear, high voice rang out with a certain triumph that Enjolras could understand. While none of them had wanted Charles X to tighten his grip on power, his doing so still provided opportunities. 

“The illusion that the Charter could protect the people’s liberty has melted away like mist,” Enjolras said, smiling at Feuilly, who was perched awkwardly on the edge of the sole cushioned chair in Enjolras’s apartment. “Perhaps now something real can take its place.”

Feuilly began to talk of the iniquities of Charles, and the arrogance shown by him in Algeria, and as he spoke his animation grew, and his wariness lessened. Enjolras was glad of it. It was common to see Feuilly animated, but to see him lower his guard was something else. 

Their talk soon outgrew the chicaneries of Charles X. Feuilly pulled out a pamphlet to illustrate a point, and Enjolras leaned over his shoulder, peering at the smudged words and the derisive sketch. 

The kiss happened almost before Enjolras knew it. He could not say who had begun it. There had been Feuilly’s shoulder against his and the puff of Feuilly’s breath on his cheek. Then, with no prelude that he could identify, their lips had met for a long and dazzling moment before Enjolras jerked away, realizing what he had done.

“Forgive me,” he said, mortified. He drew back, giving Feuilly space to—to walk away, or to strike Enjolras if he chose. Instead, Feuilly grabbed his arm.

“You did nothing wrong.” Feuilly was breathing hard, his face scarlet. “I—” He looked away. “Perhaps we shouldn’t. But you did nothing wrong.”

“Perhaps we shouldn’t,” Enjolras echoed, sounding uncertain even to himself.

Feuilly, catching his tone, looked up and held his gaze. They stood still for a moment, regarding each other, suspended between recklessness and cowardice.

It was Feuilly who first crossed the invisible line, raising a hand to touch Enjolras’s cheek. Enjolras released his breath, and bent to press his lips to Feuilly’s again, shivering at the contact.

Enjolras did not know what this change meant—was it unnatural? Or perhaps dishonorable—didn’t Feuilly live with a woman, presumably his mistress? But he had no time to ponder it. The people raised barricades in the city the very next day. He and Feuilly and the other Amis were among them. Enjolras thought of nothing but tactics and, in between heated moments, of the world they could build once this was over.

Nothing, that is, until the night when Joly charged into the room where the wounded and the surplus gunpowder were, supporting Combeferre and followed by Feuilly. Enjolras was there to retrieve gunpowder. He looked up at the sound of Joly’s voice, sharp and uncontrolled.

Enjolras jumped to his feet. “What happened?”

Joly, pushing Combeferre onto one table and commanding Feuilly to sit on a nearby chair, delivered a garbled, meandering speech. The thrust of it was that Combeferre had taken a bullet to the leg and fallen while helping a wounded comrade to safety. Feuilly had rushed out in front of the barricade to get Combeferre, and dragged him back, at the cost of an injury to Feuilly himself. He had been grazed in the chest. 

“It’s not serious,” Feuilly said, fidgeting. “I don’t need to stay here, I’ll just go—”

Joly, not deigning to reply with words, simply shoved Feuilly back down with one hand, the other still digging in Combeferre’s leg. After fishing out the bullet and suturing the wound, which happily did not seem deep, Joly turned back to Feuilly.

Enjolras, for his part, remained beside Combeferre, who had fallen unconscious. He had not lost much blood. But the shock, and the pain of both wound and treatment, had done their work. His face was white, his breathing shallow. Enjolras’s hands clenched into ineffectual fists.

He did not know how long he stood there before Joly’s cry broke his trance. 

“What?” Enjolras said, striding over.

“Feuilly,” said Joly, looking appalled. Feuilly, holding his shirt closed, set his jaw. 

“What of him?”

“He’s a woman,” Joly said incoherently.

“Talk sense, Joly.”

“I am! Feuilly—he—she—is really a woman. She’s been pretending to be a man, and we must get her out of here, Enjolras, before she gets hurt worse. She has no business being here.”

“ _She_ is right here, and staying here,” snapped Feuilly. Enjolras looked at him for a denial, but received none. Feuilly, or whatever _her_ name was, simply turned pink and looked Enjolras straight in the eye, without uttering a word.

Abruptly, Enjolras turned away and went to sit some way off, just outside the door to the room. The betrayal felt like a blow to the stomach. He needed to collect himself, to make sure he responded with reason and justice instead of lashing out like a startled beast.

Enjolras had heard of such things before, of course. Joan of Arc was only the most famous example. There were others. But Joan of Arc had never concealed her true sex. Feuilly had lied to him—lied to them all—befriended them under false pretenses.

Yet Enjolras himself was a liar. They all were. But that was different. They did not lie to each other. They lied to their landlords, to any gendarme they met, to passersby on the street. If they didn’t tell such lies, their efforts would have been fruitless. They and everyone who believed as they did would be in prison, and France would not be a tantalizing hair’s breadth from becoming a republic.

And if Feuilly had not lied to them about her sex, their world would be smaller and narrower, their minds more cramped and starved. They surely would not have admitted her to the Amis. Women and men each had their roles to play in the republic. In the home, women’s role was to raise children to be virtuous citizens. In the public sphere, women should be educated and enfranchised, so they might use their power to free their children from war and ignorance, and their sisters from ruin and slavery. So Combeferre argued, and Enjolras after consideration had agreed. But the rigors and horrors of war, the risks of underground societies—such things were men’s business. It would never have even occurred to Enjolras that women should share in them. As for Combeferre, he would be appalled at the idea: he revered women for the very gentleness that unfit them for war. Courfeyrac’s chivalrous nature would recoil at the notion of a woman braving combat and arrest as much as men did. Bahorel admired rough women, but his experience with other political groups had led him to suggest keeping grisettes out of the back room of the Musain. No society that meant business could allow the perpetual distraction of flirtation at its meetings. And none of them would have believed a woman capable of the coolness under fire that Feuilly had shown. No, they would have turned Feuilly away if they had known.

What would they be, if they did not have Feuilly? They would be ignorant of the tight interweaving of their struggle with the struggles of the world outside France. They would be provincial, failing to understand their role in the struggle of humanity itself. They would be short a skilled hand on the barricade, and Combeferre—Combeferre would likely be dead.

Feuilly’s lie to them was as necessary and beneficial as their lies to the gendarmes. Enjolras felt the full shame of that comparison. He stared unseeing at the sky, sickened.

He could not blame Feuilly, whose lies did not tarnish her, whose sex merely made her bravery more admirable. He could only try to atone for forcing her to lie.

Enjolras rose, and turned back to Feuilly.

Joly was still by her side, rambling inconsequentially about Musichetta. Enjolras suppressed a smile. It was reassuring, to know that even at such a moment, Joly was still Joly.

Feuilly looked up at him, guarded and closed, as if expecting an attack, and Enjolras tasted once more the bitterness of self-contempt. He tried, feeling very awkward, to tell her what was in his mind.

“So you won’t tell all the others, then?” Feuilly said when Enjolras was finished, an ill-concealed tremor in her voice.

“No.” Enjolras saw that Feuilly looked skeptical, and he hastened to reassure her. “I swear it by all that I believe in, by every ideal and principle I hold dear. No one will learn of this from me without your consent.”

After a moment, Feuilly nodded. They both turned to look at Joly, who threw up his hands. “Oh, I won’t tell either, of course. You have my word, by the Republic and by my magnets and by anything else you’d care to have me swear by. Though I wish, Feuilly—I suppose I’ll keep on calling you that—I wish you’d stay out of this. It isn’t safe at all. But if you insist, I won’t betray you.” Tutting like a peevish schoolmaster, he bustled off in the direction of a wounded longshoreman. Enjolras caught Feuilly’s eye; they both smiled, almost in spite of themselves.

“Thank you,” said Feuilly.

Enjolras winced. “No. You have nothing to thank me for.” He paused. “What is your true name?”

“When I last lived openly as a woman, my name was Dahlia.”

The name did not suit her. “Would you prefer that I call you that, when we are alone?”

“No,” said Feuilly. “I would like it very much if we could go on exactly as before.”

There was a silence as Enjolras remembered what _before_ had been, what their friendship had led them to. His face grew hot; he saw Feuilly’s cheeks turn pink once more. 

“Or perhaps not _exactly_ as before,” Feuilly amended, speaking very fast, “because naturally I understand that you would not wish to, but—”

“What? No—you must not think that.” Enjolras blurted out the words before thinking, and then felt like a fool. But he did wish to. This changed nothing. A surprising fact, but he would not deny it. In the world’s eyes, this new knowledge should change everything, by revealing as natural what Enjolras had believed perverse. Society would say that the new turn of their friendship should be easier since Feuilly was a woman. Enjolras himself would have assumed that a woman could not be a man’s comrade as Feuilly was. Society erred, and so had he. After the first shock of betrayal faded, nothing was changed.

Feuilly’s eyes widened. “Then—you mean—you wish to continue the way we were going?”

Enjolras slowly took her hand, giving her time to draw away. Was he insulting her virtue by suggesting this? If so, surely she would tell him. “If you will allow it,” he said.

Wordlessly Feuilly clasped his hand tightly in hers, in silent but forthright answer. “It’s fitting that you know the truth now,” she said after a moment. “We’re on the brink of a new republic, with the old tyrannies and lies and prejudices swept away. I would hate to begin this grand enterprise while still lying to you.” 

“I am honored to know it, and deeply sorry that you could not trust me with it before.”

“Well, it’s in the past,” Feuilly said, briskly, “and now we’re entering the future, with no falsehoods between us.” He—she—leaned forward to kiss him lightly, pulling back after a mere second, and glancing around to make sure no one had seen. “My wound is shallow, and it sounds as though the fighting has started again. I should get back to it.” She rose, tugging him upwards with her.

“As should I,” said Enjolras. He had received forgiveness he did not merit from a dear friend he had not valued enough, but he could not dwell on either the joy or the shame. There was work to be done. He clasped Feuilly’s shoulder in a brief farewell, and they returned to their posts.


End file.
